One Easy Thing You Can Do Today to Improve Your Relationship
July 27th, 2008 |By Barbi Pecenco, MA
Click here to contact Barbi and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
As a therapist, I am often asking clients what things mean to them. For example, when a client describes an event that happened, it’s important to ask what that meant to them, because people assign various meanings to the same exact events in their lives.
Nowhere is this more clear than in couples counseling. One recent example that comes to mind is a client who told me that his wife became furious when he asked her if the chicken they had at home was boneless or not. To him it was a simple question with very little meaning attached.
To his wife, it was a much different story. “He KNOWS I only keep boneless chicken in the house. That’s why I got so angry,” she said as if that explained everything. He protested that this wasn’t a dumb question and said that there was a good possibility that there could be other chicken in the house besides boneless chicken.”
This argument started to take off again in my office, but I finally interrupted and told them this was so NOT about the chicken. They were stumped. What else could it possibly be about then?
I asked the wife what it meant to her that her husband asked her about the chicken. She was confused about the question so I asked her again. (It’s sometimes hard for us to look deeper when it can so easily seem like it really is about chicken).
Once she looked inside and asked herself what this all meant, she came up with it. “It’s like he doesn’t even know me if he could ask a question like that. I only eat boneless chicken.” Once the client comes up with the meaning, it’s important for me to keep them there and help them explore their meanings and to help the other partner hear them too. It turns out the “He doesn’t know me,” meaning was a common theme behind most of their fights along with similar themes such as, “He only thinks of himself,” and “I’m not important to him.”
Once the husband understood the meaning his wife was ascribing to some of his seemingly mundane questions or actions, he was instantly able to empathize with her. He was not able to do that earlier, when all he saw coming from her was anger over what he thought was an innocent question about chicken.
If they had a better connection, he could get away with asking questions like these. But because the couple is already distressed, his wife is less tolerant of any hint of one of those themes coming up.
When we don’t stop to ask our partner what our question, comment, or behavior means to them, then what we see on the surface (usually anger or withdrawl) becomes the focus of the argument and not what’s going on emotionally for each other underneath it all. We lose an opportunity to really get to know each other when we don’t understand our partner’s meaning.
The next time your partner is mad at you or withdrawing from you or engaging in some other behavior that doesn’t make sense to you, ask a variation of the following:
“What did it mean to you that I…asked about the chicken?”
“What happened for you when I told you…(add yours here)?”
“Help me understand what it means to you that I…(add yours here).”
©Copyright 2008 by Barbi Pecenco, MA. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Barbi and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
July 28th, 2008 at 1:29 am
This article very much sums up what I think many of us see in our practices when we are working with couples. There is an obvious breakdown in communication rather than a situation where the two people do not care about one anohter anymore. That is the sad reality I believe about many relationships which end today. It is not so much that they are no longer in love, it is that they have forgotten how to communicate with each other and how to resolve issues in a non threatening and non confrontational way. That is one of the best things that we as counselors and therapists can give back to them- a way to find one another again amidst the sea of hate and angst they may have been feeling.
July 30th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
lol! I love it! I am totally living the whole chicken thing and didn’t even know it! Thanks for bringing some light into this issue. Now, I’m starting to think more about why those little things he does really get under my skin. So far, I’m coming up w/ this: he thinks that what I do as a stay-at-home mom isn’t important. If it’s not important to him, who in the heck is it important to? So, if this isn’t important, I’m not important right? You can see where this is going…
July 31st, 2008 at 7:47 am
I can definitely see where you are going, Dianne! One thing leads to another so quickly. I’m glad you were able to get some clarification from this post.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I don’t mean to offend, although some here will probably say I do, I just do not get women sometimes. Why in the heck do you have to get so mad about something simple like boneless chicken?! Give us a break sometimes please!
August 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
It is easy to see how things can snowball in a relationship and then after all is said and done a breakdown over chicken can be the ultimate final straw. Silly but true. We all need to do a better job communicating with our significant others so that the end of a marriage does not boil down to a final argument about what kind of food is served in the home. But this is not always easy and I think that is what gets most people. Marriage is not only a life long committment but a full time job and it has to be worked hard at every day to keep things running smoothly.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It seems we have all lost patience with one another and that can indeed be very frustrating for a relationship. We feel it takes too much time to discover what is going on under the surface and instead focus on all of the wrong things. Perhaps if we all tried to spend a little more quality time with our partners then these types of misunderstandings would not happen. That, as well as open the lines of communication and actually tell him or her what is on our mind rather than keeping it in all of the time.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Well said. But I think couples sometimes give up too early and make too little effort to salvage the marriage. They would just rather walk away than deal with the issues.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Isn’t it amazing to you all and me too that all it takes sometimes for a marriage to survive is to simply talk with your spouse? It is alarming that so many of us have just forgotten how to talk to the one person in the world who surely at one time in our lives we felt knew us better than anyone. What happens? Do we just all get too involved in ourselves, our families, our jobs that we forget to nurture the one relationship that should mean the most to us?